Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Most recently Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian ultranationalist leader who often acts as the Kremlin’s unofficial spokesman, warned that “if someone attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO and the people start to protest against this and they are harassed…then Russia will have the right to defend its citizens in Ukraine.” He added that “it would be ideal for both Georgia and Ukraine to remain neutral.”

The Russians have expanded the passport program in Ukraine. Anyone who is "Russian" can pick up a passport and Russian citizenship. They had been doing this only in Crimea. They just expanded it to the rest of the country. They're tauting it as the way to help those poor souls that had been lost on the other side of the USSR's split to allow them to come home.

That might have been plausible a decade ago. However, the Russians did a similar stunt in Georgia's break away regions a year or so before the Russo-Georgian War. Now they're testing the waters in Ukraine? Where Ukraine lacks a military to protect herself, really? huh. Sounds like the Bear is getting set to chew on the helpless again.

If only Europe would drop its objections! A lot of resentment by Ukrainians against NATO, EU, and the West is because of the difficulty in getting visas and the perception that the West outright rejects them. *sighs*